Stand On Solid Ground

 Do you remember the story of the three little pigs? You know the one where the three pigs go off and build their own houses.

One is in a rush and quickly built a house out of straw. The second built a house from wood and the third takes his time to build a solid home from bricks.

Then the big bad Wolf blows down the first two pigs house’s because they never spent the time to get the foundations right. But because the third one prepared his properly, he was safe from the Wolf.

This relates to the way that we set up our lives.

Just as the first little pig built his house from straw, many people base their life around one thing such as work or a relationship. But the problem with this is that if something catastrophic happens to that thing the individual’s life will come crashing down. What do you do when your purpose for living has gone?

The second little pig bases her life on a number of pillars, such as family, work, hobbies and so on. They may have a Partner, children, work, hobbies, friends and so on. The danger is that they are still being supported or propped up by things external to them.

I have come across people who have led what most would call a balanced and healthy life. They had many interests and a wide ‘support network’. Unfortunately sometimes a sequence of events or even rarely a single event has taken away all the pillars that were holding up their life. This is going to cause the individual to feel somewhere from depressed to suicidal.

And most people would say that they were entitled to feel that way. The question is do you want the quality of your life determined by what happens to you? Or do you want to become the Author of your own life?

Life always will throw up situations and obstacles to block what you think you want. You can either, as most people do, become frustrated, bitter, angry or disillusioned. Or from this minute forward… you can determine to live a life of passion, excitement and joy regardless of what life throws at you.

This is what the third little pig chose. When there was no danger and no reason to put in any more than minimal effort, he did. As a result he was prepared and immune to the threat of the big bad wolf.

Your choice is to put in as little effort as you need to now? Or to prepare yourself for what life is about to throw at you, so that when it comes it doesn’t effect you? If you choose to prepare yourself… use the third little pig’s strategy…

This is to create an overriding strategy or philosophy of life. One that drives every thought, word and action in your life. Of course, life still contains the same people and passions, but they are enjoyed rather than needed.

Some people don’t like the thought that they aren’t needed or don’t need others. If you need others you are with them because you have to be. If you don’t need them you are free to go at any time and so are with them to enjoy them. Need creates pressure on both sides. Whereas freedom relaxes both sides allowing them to express their best sides and focus on the best of the other.

You may think this could never happen to you, but it does to some people. What if all the people you loved were together travelling or at a party when there was a huge accident leaving you the only one still alive?

What if that accident caused you permanent and serious health problems? These problems prevent you from doing your work and your hobbies. Think this is fanciful? I have spoken to people who have had this happen to them through one event and others who through a course of events over a year have had their lives devastated.

In life you never know what is going to happen. I remember when the World Trade Center buildings were brought crashing down. The most shocking thing to me was not the fact that these huge buildings could be destroyed. It was that people couldn’t believe that they could be brought down.

Many things like that amaze me. I’m astounded that it is so rare for cars to mount the pavement. Or that traffic lights don’t just suddenly go crazy causing massive accidents. The point is that there are hundreds of things in our world that work even though they could at any moment stop working. So to me when the WTC was attacked it wasn’t a great surprise. But to many it was unthinkable.

Why?

Because they used mental shortcuts that assume that tomorrow is going to be like today, with a different date. Most of the time it is. Some research indicates that we have 60,000 thoughts a day. And 55-57,000 are the same ones as the previous day. This saves us mental energy, but it also covers up many flaws in our Operating System.

So we think because the WTC is so huge and impressive it could never be destroyed. We think that because property prices have risen for the last five years they will rise tomorrow. We think because our Partner is fit and strong today they will still be there in twenty years.

But that’s not necessarily true. Life is an ever-renewing cycle.

Birth  Maturity  Death  Renewal

The problem is that most people never think about this. They live from moment-to-moment, day-to-day without an overall strategy for life guiding them. This doesn’t mean a plan guiding to one grandiose life goal. It means fitting every moment into a deeper understanding of life. Without this they often invest much of themselves in work or relationships in an attempt to achieve security or meaning. Then when things don’t work out as they hoped they feel cheated, resentful and frustrated.

Perhaps they sacrifice pursuing their passion for the sake of their Partner. Then five or ten years later He or She dies or runs off with someone else.

Or maybe they sacrifice everything to climb the corporate ladder… but just as they touch the top rung, they get made redundant with no hope of a similar position. Then they find their family has moved on without them and they have nothing left.

The devastation, the resentment and utter despair caused by these kind of scenarios wrecks people’s lives every year. It causes some to commit suicide. Since everything they believed and trusted in has been exposed as flawed… they do not know how to go on and trust again. It can cause a paralysis, as their Operating system grinds to a halt. So they then have to rebuild it completely.

All because they trusted in things that had no basis. The last few centuries have given us many examples of how this type of thinking causes problems.

In the 1630’s there was a spectacular boom in the market for Tulips. It sounds ridiculous now, – as many of our fads will be to future generations – but the rich spent a lot of money on Tulips for status, as they were rare and considered of great beauty. Speculators noticed an opportunity to buy the rights to tulip bulbs, which would produce Tulips to sell for vast profits.

They made out like bandits and the news spread. Tulips became the hot tip and more and more investors put their money in to them. The price rose and rose. Excitement grew about this sure thing, to the extent that people sold their house to buy a few Tulip bulbs. Then one day the price got too high and Tulips went out of fashion and became almost worthless. The unthinkable happened.

This has happened again and again. The South Sea Bubble, the 1920’s crash, the 1980’s and so on. And the same thing happens to individual’s with their relationships, their careers and their personal lives. Over and over again. All because of our flawed Operating Systems.

Your work, your health, the people you care most about may not always be there. Never take anything in the world for granted. Now is all there is. The past has gone and who knows what the future will bring.

Sacrifice is never necessary. It’s used when two wants are thought to be mutually exclusive. You can have both wants, but you need to be flexible and step your thinking to a higher level that allows both wants.